No recall, Apple give free iPhone 4 cases

Today at 10am PST Steve Jobs and co went on stage for a press conference about a faulty antenna, causing poor reception on the iPhone 4, which has been coined by the tech press as Antennagate.

I’m not going evaluate if Jobs’ approach was good or bad; such an opinion is pointless, we will see if iPhone 4 refunds increase, or sales drop; or not.

Before getting down to the issue Steve Jobs boasted about the sales figures, and who can blame him; 3 million iPhone 4 sold in 3 weeks! Wow. It took the Motorola Droid 75 days to reach 1m sales and that beat the iPhone 3GS. Will it be a sales war or a production speed war?

Apple’s leading man kicked off by showing other smartphones and how they also suffer from the same antenna issues. It must a be a first for Steve Jobs to show off the Droid, Samsung and Blackberry to the world’s press! The point being made is that all smart phones have a signal that decreases in strength depending on how the phone user holds the device. Steve had last week written a letter referencing Nokia mobile manuals that illustrate how to hold the phone. 15 minutes was dedicated to delivering the single message – it’s a smartphone industry problem.

Steve also shared their $100m investment over 5 years in antenna design. There was a tone of pride about the antenna design despite the bad press. Apple revealed that the iPhone 4 does drop calls more frequently than the iPhone 3gs by 1%.

Before getting on to what Apple will do about the problem there was a diversion, Apple will release the white version of the iPhone 4 on the 30th July.

Now the session moved on to what Apple will do for the customers that they (in Steve Jobs’ words and slides) “love”. Since 0.55% of iPhone users have complained there will be free cases for all customers or a full refund and cancelation of an AT&T contract. I can’t find anything yet about O2 contracts.

Before the q&a Jobs made it clear that the issue was minimal. That all phones do it. He was very clear that the press had made this issue bigger than it really was and were ‘out to get’ successful large companies such as Google and Apple. During q&a he went as far as to state that the article ran by Bloomberg suggesting Apple knew about the problem was “crock” and pointed the finger at the New York Times for making up facts about the problem and the fixes.

Well, it was interesting to follow. I cannot get my iPhone 4 to drop a call, I must be really lucky? The cost of free cases for all is nowhere near as high as a recall, which Jobs stated had been considered but the data did not warrant it. 3m cases is significant but nowhere near the reported $1.2bn for a recall.

I do not believe that this over hyped issue will effect sales. I know someone who purchased one today knowing about the PR. Our local O2 Store manager states they have not had any signs of sales slowing, they get 50 phones a day and are sold out by lunch.

I am far more interested in the Proximity sensor bug that Jobs referred to and informed everyone there would be a fix in the next OS update, coming soon. I keep putting calls on speaker phone with my cheek!

I am sure there will be many Apple bashing articles within hours, and an equal amount of Fan Boy articles. For recruiters wanting to engage with Mobile get iPhone or Android, but don’t let this nonsense affect your choice!

I thought Steve Jobs handled this situation very well indeed, focus was fundamentally on their users, making sure their reputation was sustained. And as for the iphone 4 being likened to Microsoft’s Vista, my question would be, where’s vista’s bumper?

Not disagreeing the iPhone 4 sales are awesome, and that it’s a gorgeous bit of kit. I do still hold that antennagate could/should have have a better/faster response. Specifically:
There is no problem…. on to…
There’s a software algorithm problem and we’ll patch it…. on to….
It’s a smartphone industry problem…. but we’ll give you a freebie….

That looks to me like Apple borrowing the kind of approach Microsoft would have used in 1994.

They’re a great firm with superb products, but on this one, they screwed up the PR on it. It stands out so much because it’s something Apple usually do so well.

This one is a very interesting one to observe and analyse from a leadership perspective. But personally I believe that any analysis is always going to be highly speculative as there will be so much detail and considerations inside Apple that we never see.

Early on Apple stated the issue was how the phone was held and pointed everyone to Nokia user manuals (this was jobs letter). So from the start it was a wider issue than just iPhone 4.

Next they found a bug in the phone signal meter and transparently told everyone- which was clear and open, but managed to confuse everyone!

Then at the Press Conference (did you watch it? MoRecNews live tweeted it) they held up their hands and said we are not perfect, we suffer the same faults as the entire industry, the data says there is 1% more call drops than 3GS, our refunds are low, we love our customer we are going to go one better than others in the industry and give away a fix or have your money back.

The give away and the refund have some clear logistic issues that required resolving prior to announcement. The cases need sourcing, Apple don’t have enough of their bumper and have had to bring 3rd party manufactures into play.

The refund is not straight forward, it involves consumers contract between the infividual or business and the mobile carrier, this is nothing to do with Apple and requires the carrier to cancel in order to allow a refund.

I guess Apple could have ignored these logistics and announced it anyway, but that surly would be worse depending on the outcome of each issue and leave customers further confused.

The message I heard as a customer was consistent, was it truthful and honest? Only Apple really know this! The press certainly made it harder to hear the message!

Now I am no PR expert! I am a techy at heart. What do you feel should have been done differently? Apart from the probable impossible – have a solution and tell the world within 24 hours.

I’m no PR expert either – by dint of experience, I’m more recruiter than anything else. I don’t feel qualified to suggest how they should have done it – but I do feel free to express the opinion that what we’ve seen wasn’t good enough. Or perhaps more accurately – what we’ve seen doesn’t feel consistent with the levels Apple have previously achieved. Does that make sense?

My old 3G very rarely dropped calls, but I’ve had 2 just last week on the 4g.
I’m unsure if this is a Vodafone issue as I recently swapped back from o2

What I find odd is that until the 4g arrived, apple hadn’t entered the case business.

Coincidence? I doubt it.
I love apple, but I’m seriously thinking about taking this one back until they fix the problem as I’ve never liked having to use a case.

One thing I think worth mentioning, and this is taken straight from other blogs, is the 1/2 % who called apple to complain. It’s about 15000 people. That’s huge. I would wager that the majority of people were waiting for the press conference before taking any action. I was certainly in that camp.

Great point that the 0.55% is a big number of calls for any call center to handle as complaints in a 3 week period.

I also subscribe to the thinking that for every one that calls 100 more had the same experience but could not be bothers to take any action.

It is a very keen spot that until this phone Apple had never manufactured cases. Is this enough evidence to say they knew all along but were too close to launch date to afford a delay? Perhaps, then again perhaps not.

It’s interesting that Jobs was, as you say, trying to give the impression: “we love our customers, we are going to go one better than others in the industry and give away a fix or have your money back.”

But the only problem with the idea that they are ‘going one better’ than their competitors is that, the only way this could work was if everyone was currently having the same issues with their different smartphones to the same extent as the iPhone 4.

As far as I’m aware, no other smartphone consumers are unhappy in droves with their device’s (apparently inherent) reception issues, except the current unhappy Apple consumers. So in this respect I still feel they are back pedalling. By highlighting that they are ‘no better’ than RIM, Samsung, HTC and Nokia in their press conference, they are just inviting a whole world of hostility from competitors and I.M.O not exactly being 100% tactile or humble in their acceptance of their fault.

On the whole it was as fair as it was ever going to be- no chance of a mass recall, and clearly they showed attentiveness to their consumers by offering the free case. My advice for next time, let’s leave the playground, ‘my phone’s no more rubbish than any other phone’ mentality at home, Mr Jobs!